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ExamineChina.com submitted this infographic to us! They also provided a short description:

Alibaba is aiming for one of the biggest tech IPOs, www.ExamineChina.com presents an interesting infographic about the whole Alibaba Group.
The Chinese company is best know for their B2B platform but in fact, the Chinese giant has a varied portfolio of tech companies.
Never heard of AliExpress or AliPay? Get familiar with all the companies in Alibaba Group – the services will be available in the US very soon.

While the content covers what the title sets you up to expect, the infographic doesn’t use visuals to help you understand any of the content better. The circle gives a sense of unity, conveying that all the companies in the Alibaba Group are related, but there are no visuals to explain what each company does or provide any additional background. We rely on the text to tell us what each company is.

An intro and conclusion would be appropriate places to utilize text to help offer context on the infographic. Then the body of the infographic could go into more visual detail about how each company within the Alibaba Group differs.

In all I’d give this infographic a C, since it relies almost entirely on text for its story. Visuals should be at the heart of any infographic.

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This infographic was submitted to us by Targeted Merchant Solutions, who also provided this description:

It’s important to maximize your business’s potential. Accepting only cash payments greatly reduces overall profit margins and customer base. As more and more businesses offer debit/credit/gift card payments, having the right merchant service provider is an invaluable resource. Not only will your business be more attractive to potential customers, but having merchant equipment provides safer payment options, reduces the risk of theft and can even allow mobile payments. It’s time to better equip your business with affordable merchant equipment, marketing services and merchant services with Targeted Merchant Solutions. We have the tools to help your business succeed in a competitive marketplace.

This infographic explains why accepting debit, credit, and prepaid card payments could be vital to expanding your business. It uses powerful stats to make this case, and displays vibrant colors that partner with the stats to keep the viewer engaged.

There are two main issues with the design: it uses several different illustration styles (which interferes with continuity) and it hasn’t been thoroughly proofread. Infographics should pick one design style and utilize it throughout to avoid jarring the reader — all visual elements should help rather than distract. Typos are another distraction, and they are prevalent here. Capitalization is inconsistent (title casing versus sentence casing for stats and randomly capitalized words like “Credit Cards”), a word is misspelled (“Annnual Sales”), and the copy varies between “and” and an ampersand.

Always make sure your infographic is ready for your audience! I’d give this one a C since it needs some visual consistency and proofreading before it’s really ready.

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This infographic was submitted to us by Fulfillment Companies.

The aesthetic theme definitely works here, since the topic is shipping and the pattern is paper/cardboard. The “FRAGILE” stamp also helps tie that theme together, and the running costs down the righthand side help viewers understand just how much a mis-shipment costs.

What this graphic needs, though, is more graphic elements. Ultimately, the viewer is relying on the text explanations to grasp the concept, when illustrations or icons could be employed to remove some of that burden from the text itself. Infographics should explain with visuals wherever possible so that viewers can look at and process information quickly and easily.

For example, Customer Dissatisfaction could be illustrated with an angry customer handing back a package (returning the product), a person walking away (not purchasing again), and an angry person talking to another person (spreading the bad reputation within their sphere of influence) — with these illustrations, the text could be cut significantly (to brief statements rather than full sentences in paragraph form) and the point would come across more efficiently.

In all I’d give this infographic a C-, as it relies too heavily on text to tell its story. Focus on the visuals to turn readers into viewers, thus keeping them engaged.

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This infographic was submitted to us by ShopSocially.

It’s good to see a little bit of data viz in the beginning, and the sections are clearly marked off and organized so it’s easy for the viewer to find where they’re going. The color scheme and iconography are kept simple, so there’s no risk of clashing or just out-of-place elements. It could, however, use a bit more of an eye-catching header.

Text is kept pretty low and the data is reigned in so that the viewer can get through the infographic in about a minute. However, that time could be even faster if more data visualization was utilized, apart from just the first section.

The rest of the infographic is packed with stats, but we have to read to get that information. Infographics should take advantage of every opportunity to visualize information; this will make it more likely that your viewers will stick around to the end of the infographic.

I would like to see an introduction and conclusion too, to prep the viewer for what to expect and leave them with something to think about (or a URL to visit for more info). The accompanying blog post on the page where the infographic lives helps with this, but if someone were to share the infographic — like on this site — they wouldn’t receive the same context.

In all I’d give this a C. It does its job, but could do so with a little more context and less… “text”-text.

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This infographic comes to us from FormStack.com, which is a website that helps people collect and manage online form data (quite a helpful tool if I do say so myself). When the folks at FormStack submitted this infographic, they had the following to say:

Currently. e-commerce has brought in close to $42 Billion in retail sales and will only steadily increase as more and more consumers turn to the Internet for their purchasing needs. However, the integration between e-commerce and small businesses seems to be slow coming.

Overall, I don’t have anything negative to say about this infographic. It’s an infographic in its purest form, filled with great charts and graphs that visualize interesting data points. The color scheme is great, the layout is great, and the subject matter is very interesting. While this infographic isn’t eye candy, it’s definitely a traditional infographic providing important information.

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This infographic comes from FeeFighters.com (formerly known as Transparent Financial Services). FeeFighters is a site that let’s e-commerce merchants find credit card processors to work with on their own terms. Rather than scouring the Internet for a merchant services provider, merchants can go to FeeFighters.com and let processing companies try to win their customership in an auction format. It’s a pretty interesting concept and the people at FeeFighters work hard to educate their users about the in’s and out’s of credit card processing companies. Many of these companies charge a variety of hidden fees, the largest of which is called Interchange. This infographic seeks to explain the variables associated to Interchange fees. The large question mark imagery is good, but I do wish that there was a bit more explanation behind everything. For example, if someone answers “no” to a question instead of “yes,” does this effect their fees more or less? This is the one big question I come away from with this infographic, but all in all it’s a pretty good way of tackling a touch subject.